Desi Soccer Mom

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Dec 9, 2013

“Can I have the free swim shedule?” I asked the teenager
manning the desk at the pool.

“A what…?” he asked, his eyebrows raised in mock confusion.
I could hear the stifling of giggles from the assorted teens gathered behind
him.

I tried my best to ignore the sniggers and braved on. “A
shedule of the free swim? You know the timetable for days when the pool is open
for us to come and practice?”

“Ah, you mean a schedule? Wait a minute,” he said,
enunciating the ‘sche’ and the ‘d’ in schedule, as he dived under the desk,
clearly trying to get over the laughter that was threatening to overcome him.

As I walked away with the free-swim schedule, I could hear
the laughter erupting behind me. Only then it hit me that the little twerp knew
all along what I was talking about. He was clearly used to our accents, what
with all the desi men and women who
frequented the community colleges’ swimming lessons. I am sure we could go to a
private swim class and get better lessons. But we desis are cheap and the community college fee rates suited us just
fine.

“I just need to learn the technique,” I overheard a paunchy
guy in his 40s tell the instructor. “You know, so I don’t have to stay in the
shallow end and be able to rescue my son.”

“Sir, what you are learning here is not enough for you to
jump head long and rescue anyone,” she said, clearly not trusting the guy’s
technique.

She had obviously no idea of the over confident Indian male
species who thought they could learn to swim and rescue a drowning 5-year old
just by taking twice a week, six week swim lessons at a community college. But I
was FOB (as I was politely told by someone who had been living here for five
years) or fresh off the boat, with barely three months in the country and was
all too aware of the Indian male phenomenon.

Getting used to America was another matter. It wasn’t as big
surprise as it was for some of the other desi
women but it was still a mystery I was trying to unravel. The shedule –
schedule was one of those incidences that made it perfectly clear to me how to
pronounce certain words. It didn’t matter if I spoke good English. I also had
to get the pronunciation right and get the word usage down to a pat.

“Don’t say ‘double’ 4,” Ajay, my husband of four months,
told me one day after he heard me give my cell phone number to a friend.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well, you know how you said, 972-9double 4-6123? Just say,
972-944-6123. Here, double is usually reserved for bra sizes, as in double D,
double B, etc.,” he said, obviously knowledgeable in bra jargon. That was a
piece of clothing that also threw me for a loop initially, with its different
sizes and the underwire. Who ever thought of the underwire bra must have been a
man because these things were pokey and pinchy and not very comfortable. I
longed for the days when I could go to the hosiery shop in my town and tell the
guy behind the counter to give me a medium sized, cotton bra and he would
produce four bras of different colors and fabric patterns. And that was that.
It fitted me fine and I was done for the whole year.

Here, Ajay, told me to buy at least seven, “one for each
day. I do laundry once a week and you need to get used to that routine too.”
Whoever heard of once a week laundry! Next thing you know, he will tell me to
grocery shop once a week and cook food for the week on weekend. And what do you
know, he did! (For the record, I do not like to use more than one exclamation
mark on a page, let alone a paragraph, but I thought these two notions
warranted the indulgence.)

Doubling back to proper wording when giving out phone
numbers, I welcomed these nuggets of information in order to avoid future
backhanded giggling and general amusement of teenagers. And the thing was these
teenagers were everywhere; in the shops, working behind fast food counters, in
movie theaters and hanging out in the malls. They looked at you with their
sullen, bored expressions and discouraged all manner of talking. Conducting a
transaction was one of the pleasure of shopping back home. We could chat with
the shopkeeper, haggle on the prices, and discuss the weather. It didn’t matter
if you were buying grocery, vegetables, clothes or shoes.

The first time I went to Gap, I started talking to the girl behind
the check- out counter.

“Hi! I am from India. I just landed a week ago and needed
some new clothes,” I said.

“Un-ha. Will this be all? Did you find everything you were
looking for in the store?” she asked.

“Yes, I did, thank you. I love your store. So many different
cuts of jeans and I love all the colors of the T-shirts,” I said.

Thankfully, this one was too bored to giggle.

As I picked up my blue bag and walked out the store, I heard
her ask the next customer the same question. I looked up at Ajay, standing
outside the shop, waiting for me.

“You could have told me the counter-girl asks everyone the
same question and not to bother chatting with her?” I said.

“I can’t think of everything to tell you. Use your judgment.
On second thought, ask me if you are in doubt,” he said.

We both remembered the 911 incident. It still makes me laugh
but he winces every time he thinks about it.

It happened the first night we landed in Dallas. Some
friends of his picked us up from the airport and brought us back to his flat,
which I was quickly learning was called an apartment.

It was a cold, February day when we landed here and the wind
chill was in the 30s. I had experienced cold before but not this bone chilling
cold.

“I thought Texas was supposed to be hot?” I asked, as I
stood shivering at curbside pick-up, waiting for his friend.

“Yes, it is. In summer,” he said, warm in his wool sweater
and blazer.

“Well, I am going to have to go shopping,” I said, shivering.

“I know,” he said with a sigh.

I was wearing a sateen salwar-kameez and an ill-fitting
man’s leather coat that had been altered to fit my slender 5ft 2” frame. That
was all I could find in my small town where my cousin had a small shop selling
leather handbags and coin purses. He had procured the coat for me from his
vendor but forgot to tell him it was for his cousin sister.

We drove through highways and overpasses, passing cars of
different makes and models, all gliding past on silent wheels. There was no
honking, no screeching and no shouting of angry drivers and best of all there
was no pollution as far as I could tell. Anyway, back at the “apartment” the
heat was turned way down since Ajay had been gone for the last two weeks. In
case you are wondering, he was in India, getting married to me.

His friend helped him carry the two big American Tourister suitcases
up the apartment stairs and said he would come by later to pick us up for
dinner. I explored the beige apartment with a galley kitchen, a small bedroom
off the living room and a bathroom with a tub in it. The small kitchen seemed
cozy and I longed for a hot cup of chai but with no milk in the fridge and no
tea leaves, the hot beverage seemed elusive.

“We can pick up some Statbucks on the way to the
restaurant,” he said. But the thought of getting down and braving the icy cold
wind for a cup of coffee was not warming enough for me. Now, if there was a
chaiwalla at the corner of the block
selling hot piping ginger infused chai I might be tempted to get down. But no
way was I getting out of the warm car for a Starbucks. The ‘cheap’ desi in me
can never justify a $3 coffee when I can whip up some instant coffee powder
with milk and sugar and make a desi cappuccino
at home.

I needed to get ready for dinner. We were dinning with two
of his friends at an Italian restaurant, a cuisine I knew nothing about except
for pizza. I had high doubts about the authenticity of the pizza I had in India
with spicy tomato sauce and broiled paneer topping. I was prepared to order a
blander version of the pizza if need be but when I glanced at the menu, I
didn’t recognize any thing I had eaten before.

“She might like eggplant parmesan,” one of his friends
suggested when I declared I didn’t know what to order.

I didn’t have the heart to tell them I didn’t like
eggplants. Instead, I smiled and nodded, eager to make a good impression.

There was a salad that came with it, all green leaves and
olives. The only things I liked were the croutons and the cheese and the blue
cheese dressing that came with it. I munched on those while listening to the
three of them discuss green cards, work visas and the latest gossip at work. I
barely touched the eggplant.

Back at the apartment, all cold and hungry and homesick, I
told Ajay I wanted to call up my parents.

“Use the country code 91 then dial your town code without
the zero and then your phone no,” he said, handing me the phone.

“Why don’t you do it this once? I am tired,” I said.

“I won’t be here all the time. You need to learn to do this
yourself,” he said.

And that is how the 911 incident happened. I dialed 911
instead of 91, realized my mistake and hung up quick.

“What happened? Did you dial 911 instead?” he asked.

“No,” I said, trying not to sound like a simpleton who
couldn’t even dial an international phone number.

What I did not know was that the operator on the other end
had already picked up the phone. She dialed back our phone number and he picked
up.

“Sir, we received a call from this no. Did you or anyone in
your household call from this no?” she asked.

“I think my wife may have misdialed while trying to call
India,” he said.

“Sir, please put your wife on the line and get off the
speaker phone,” she said.

He handed me the phone, “It is for you.”

“Hello,” I said.

“Ma’am, this is the 911 operator. Are you off the
speakerphone?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Did you just call 911? Is everything alright?”

“Yes, everything is fine,” I said, trying to sound
nonchalant.

“You see, I landed here from India today afternoon and I was
trying to call my parents back home. I dialed 911 instead of 91, the
international code, by mistake,” I explained.

“Would you like me to send an officer to check on you?” she
asked, ignoring my explanation.

“No ma’am, I am fine. There is no need to send someone,” I
said, panicking now at the thought of a police officer visiting our apartment
at night.

“Ok, you have a good night ma’am,” she said and hung up.

I looked around to see Ajay listening intently to the
conversation.

“You dialed 911, didn’t you?” he said.

“Yes, but I hung up as soon as I realized what had happened.
How was I to know the call went through?” I said.

“This is not like India. The calls go through quick and
everyone has caller-id,” he said.

Five minutes after our conversation, there was a knock on
the door. Ajay opened it to find a police officer standing on the doorway.

“Sir, may I speak to the lady of the house?” he said.

I went to the door as he asked Ajay to step back in the
other room.

“Ma’am, did you call 911? Are you in need of assistance?” he
asked bending down from his 6ft frame.

“I explained to the lady on the phone, I misdialed 911. I
was trying to call India, you see and the code begins with 91, followed by the town
code, minus the zero and then the home phone number.”

He looked over my head inside the apartment and saw paper
buntings on the wall and some rose petals leading to the bedroom. It was his friends’
way of welcoming us back.

“You see, we came back from India today in the afternoon and
his friends put all this up,” I tried to explain. I was mortified for the
officer to see the blatant suggestion the rose petals were indicating. After 24
hours of air travel that involved crossing two continents and three time zones,
I just wanted to curl up in the bed and sleep.

The officer seemed convinced and walked away, talking into
his walkie-talkie.

Ajay came out of the room looking worried.

“Is it over?” he asked.

“Yes, I think it is fine. I told him what happened and he
seemed convinced. I think these buntings and rose petals your friends put up
convinced him finally,” I said.

“I guess we will have to clean it up tomorrow,” he said
looking at the mess.

“I can’t believe they sent an officer down to check on me
just because I misdialed,” I said, yawning.

“Yes, they will do that. I think you have had enough
adventure for the day. I know I have had enough for a lifetime. Let’s go to
bed,” he said.

As I climbed into bed, I realized that it was high because I
was sleeping on two mattresses and covering myself with a comforter, which was
just another word for a blanket which here means a thin coverall. It was cozy
though and soon I was drifting off, with dreams of making hot, piping ginger
chai in the morning. As soon as I figure out the electric cooktop.

Mar 15, 2013

I was making dal for the kid and
realized I was running low on salt. Like any normal person I have five
different kinds of salts in my pantry but I use a mix of kosher and iodized
table salt for day to day cooking. I replenished the salt in the container and
went about my business. Read: unloaded the dishwasher, chopped some veggies and
washed some dishes. By then the dal was ready except it needed some salt. So I
added some and tasted. It tasted the same. So I kept adding the salt by pinches so as not to over salt. I added a pinch and tasted. No difference. I added some more and tasted. No difference again. This went on for
a few minutes and I started doubting my taste buds.

I decided to taste the salt to
check if I could taste it in the raw. You get where I am going. I had added sugar to the
salt dabba. Now, a sensible person would have chucked the sugar at this time
which is what I was about to do. But then, I tasted the sugared salt a bit more
and it just tasted sugary to me. I figured it would be ok to add it to the
sugar dabba instead of wasting all that sugar.

In the evening, we all sat down
around the table for left over pizza and tea. You get where I am going by now,
right? The sugar in my tea was heavily salted!

And yes, I chucked the whole
mix. That is my mishap in the kitchen for the week. What was your most recent
kitchen mishap?

Mar 11, 2013

I asked and you delivered. You are the best bunch that a
blogger could ask to support an event to refute an opinion stated as a fact by
a slow cooker cookbook author (now say that fast!). You cooked in your Indian
pressure cookers, clicked pictures of them and narrated stories and adventures
you have had with them. Thank you for validating and proving that Indian
pressure cookers are indeed safe and easy to use. Here is the roundup in the
order I received them. If I missed any of your entrees, do let me know and I
will add you promptly with my sincerest apologies.

When Soma moved to America with her husband, she couldn’t
bring her pressure cooker with her. It was fortuitous too because she made
friends with another girl and borrowed her pressure cooker whenever she needed
to use. The lending and borrowing of pressure cooker blossomed into a lifelong
friendship. And yes, she did eventually buy her own pressure cooker and
recently, a spanking new Futura in which she cooked this delicious lahsuni dal.

During her courting
days, Anita would visit her in-laws and help out with the Sunday morning ritual
of cleaning the weekly vegetables and preparing a simple lunch that included
sada varan bhaat. After marriage, she learnt that overcooking toor dal to make
sada varan bhaat wasn’t frowned on South of the Vindhyas. The girl from North of the Vindhyas
now overcooks her toor dal without any qualms and feeds her family this
comforting meal every Sunday.

After getting
hitched, Priya’s techie man brought a 3 ltr Contura based on her specifications
and she has never needed another cooker since. She says it “serves all her
purposes”. She makes this Kerala potato curry in her pressure cooker all the
time and so far the cooker hasn’t blown up in her face.

Siri grew up watching her mom cook in not one but sometimes
two pressure cookers simultaneously. It is now an integral part of her
household as well. So much so that she “literally wakes up every single morning
with the sound of the whistle whooshing across the kitchen till our bedroom”.
In case you are wondering, it is her mother-in-law who is using the pressure
cooker in the mornings. She made a filling one-pot achari chana pulao in her 3
ltr pressure cooker.

Princy calls her prized Hawkins pressure cooker her “best
pal” in the kitchen. She uses it every day, sometimes twice a day. She cooks
this scrumptious and filling egg biryani when she is feeling lazy but still
wants to eat something spicy and yummy.

Lata remembers her mother and grandmother using the pressure
cooker since the appliance was first introduced in the market. She remembers
them cooking dal for rassam and sambhar and steaming idlis and vegetables in
it. She made a delicious dhal kalbeliya, a blend of three lentils pressure
cooked and then sautéed with tempered onions, garlic and tomatoes.

Preeti talks about her first taste of momos (steamed
dumplings) she had in Bhutan as an air force base kid. She hadn’t liked the
look of them but when she tried one she couldn’t have enough. She decided to
relive that memorable trip with her friends and family by steaming some momos
of her own in her pressure cooker.

Growing up, Sandeepa never cared for her grandma’s famous
and much in demand Gota Sheddho. A traditional meal in Bengali families the day after Saraswati Pujo, she usually swallowed a morsel of the cold dish and called it a day. Now all
grown up with kids of her own, she revived the tradition with a few changes of
her own. A one pot dish, she cooked the Sheddho in her pressure cooker and ate it
hot with a squeeze of lime.

Manisha learnt to use the pressure cooker when she was 9
years old. She now lives in a high altitude area of 5320ft
and values her two pressure cookers ever more. They are indispensable tools in
her kitchen. She not only cooked a delicious whole red lentil curry (massorichiamti) in her pressure cooker but wrote an excellent post to demystify urban
legends about pressure cookers not blowing up in people’s faces.

Pavani owns half a dozen
pressure cookers that serve different purposes in her kitchen. She uses them to
cook rice, lentils, veggies and curries. She showed her love and appreciation
for her pressure cookers by making this tasty Goan Mixed Vegetable curry and
jeera rice in her two Prestiges.

Shri wrote an almost poetic odeto the workhorse of the Indian kitchen and wrote down detailed directions on
how to cook chickpeas and lentils using the separator pans in the pressure
cookers. Check out her beautiful photographs and her post here.

Mandira owns three pressure cooker and all of them are put to good use including the small Hawkins which she uses to cook lunch for her kids. She made a nutritious moong dal with peas and carrots in her pressure cooker.

The girl who hosts A Mad Tea Party recently posted her dad's tomato-beetroot soup recipe that is strikingly similar to my mom's tomato-beetroot soup recipe. As if that was not enough, both of them pressure cook the vegetables and then puree them to make an amazingly delicious, nutritious soup that is ready with the rest of the meal. The next time you are craving some soup, make this in your pressure cooker and you will be glad you did.

This brings us to the end of the
roundup which was a little shorter than I expected. My contribution in defense
of the Indian pressure cooker is here and here.

I had a lot of fun visiting
your blogs and reading about your experiences with the Indian pressure cooker.
It is heartening to know that they are such an integral part of your kitchens.
Pressure cook on.

Feb 24, 2013

If you are wondering what the title means, read on. It will all be explained in the 900+ words
that will follow this paragraph. If you are wondering how the accidental chole
aloo are related to me being a desisoccermom, that too will be explained
eventually with a recipe at the end of the post. You just have to bear through
the 900+ words to get the picture.

You see, when I started this blog my son was three and had
just started playing soccer. He was playing in one of those little Y leagues
for boys and girls and it was a very tame affair given the kids’ ages. He
enjoyed the experience of playing with other kids, kicking the ball around and
generally running around. I would drive him to practice on weekdays and games
on weekends in my car, not a van but a car, but it still gave me the rights to
be called a desisoccermom. Born and brought up in India gave me the rights to ‘desi’
as in from des or country of birth. That, in short, is the blog naming story.

All ready for the game﻿

Six months later, the kid had graduated to playing serious
soccer which meant the practice games were more disciplined and the matches
with other teams were much intense. The kids from the other teams were
bigger, aggressive and driven compared to my kid who was in it just for the fun
and none of the jostling and pushing. The first day of the match was on a cold
winter morning. My son took one look at the opposing team players kicking ball
and pushing players out of the way to score a goal and he clung to me with a
pincer grip. “I don’t want to go play,” he wailed. “I am cold. I want to go
home.”

The husband couldn’t stand his three and a half year old
cowering in my arms. He started pacing up and down the field to work off
his agitation. The coach sensed the kid’s fear and gently coaxed him to go on
the field. He held his hand and ran on the field with him. It was totally
against regulation but they allowed him anyways. A few minutes late the kid was
back in my arms and the husband back to his pacing. The routine continued for
two more weeks before I had had enough. We withdrew our boy from the team (over
the phone) and I announced that we were not going back to the soccer fields till
both the boys could learn to handle themselves on the field.

Four years later, the kid said he wanted to play soccer again
and promised he would behave. The husband promised to be a better sport on the field. So, I
enrolled the kid in the same soccer team his best friend also plays in. The games
are played indoors so hopefully the weather won’t be a mood dampener this time.
We had our first practice session last week on a cold, windy evening but both
the boys were a good sport. The younger one kicked the ball around, went around
the cones and ran with his teammates. The older one coached him a bit and
cheered him on. I walked the perimeter of the soccer field trying to keep warm.

Warm up before the match

Two days later, the match went off smoothly as well. The
kid’s team, Hawks, won 7 to 3. The kids were happy as were the parents. The kid
didn’t too badly on the field even though he incurred two penalty points for
his team when he touched the ball in the circle (yeah, I am talking soccer
jargon already). The older boy was happy his son didn’t chicken out like four
years ago. I was happy I didn’t have to handle two cranky, agitated boys. We
came home exhausted and hungry.

This is where the accidental chole aloo come in. I looked in
the fridge and found some cooked garbanzo beans from two days ago with a small
jar of left over onion-ginger-garlic paste. Now the ginger-garlic paste was no
ordinary paste. It had khus-khus (poppy seeds) and cashews in it as well as a
small tomato. This was a paste leftover from a special curry I tried to make
the day after V-day. It was supposed to be kaju-paneer masala, a rich, decadent
dish but it ended up not so good because I over roasted the masala too much,
added too much garam masala and used whole milk instead of cream to thicken the
gravy. It was a masala paste made in haste, using a combination of ingredients
grounded together instead of roasted and ground separately. It was not the best
thing I ever made but he ate it without any fuss. I am married to a saint, I
tell you.

Anyways, I had some of that raw masala paste leftover from
last week’s experiment gone awry and maybe half a cup of garbanzo beans. I
added some oil to the karahi and added the raw paste. The paste was sautéed on
a medium-low flame for about ten minutes. I don’t care much for ground onion
pastes. It tends to get bitter if you roast it too much and has the potential
to burn if you take your eyes off even for a minute. It also tends to taste raw
if not roasted enough. It is a delicate balance and I don’t do well with
delicate. This paste was easier to work with because of the added fat from the
ground khus-khus and cashews.

Once the paste was roasted to ‘just the right amount’ and
the oil started releasing from the sides, I added some tomato paste and roasted
some more. Then, I added the chickpeas, some peeled and chopped potatoes and a
generous amount of liquid. The whole mix simmered on the stove for a few minutes
till I got tired of the simmer. So, I dumped the whole mix in the 3 ltr
Prestige pressure cooker and turned it off after two whistles. The resulting
chole were good, just like they would be made in any Maharashtrian home, with a
simple rassa (gravy) only this time the rassa had poppy seeds and cashews as an
added bonus.

Here is the accidental recipe for chole aloo:

The day before you make this, soak 1 cup dry garbanzo beans
(kabuli channa) in plenty of water. By plenty I mean at least 3-4 cups.

Next day, wash the garbanzo in plenty of water or transfer
to a colander and let water run over the soaked beans for a few minutes.
Transfer to a pressure cooker, cover the beans with water and add two teaspoons
of salt and set the lid. Let the pressure build up and then lower the heat to
medium. Wait for at least 3 whistles before turning the heat off.

While the beans are cooking in the pressure cooker, and much
later when the pressure is subsiding, prepare the masala by grinding the
following:

1 cup roughly chopped onions

3-4 cloves of garlic

1 inch piece of ginger

2 small tomatoes or add 1 tbsp of tomato paste later

1 tbsp ea of khus-khus (poppy seeds) and cashew pieces
soaked in water

Now, heat a tbsp. of oil in a thick bottom karahi or wide pan of
your choice. Turn the heat to med-low and add the masala paste. At this point
the water in the onions and tomatoes tends to splatter the oil and the low
temperature helps reduce the splatter. Of course, if you have minions to clean
up after you, by all means splatter away on med-high.

Roast the masala till the oil starts to separate. Keep a
close eye on the roasting masala while you peel and chop two potatoes.

My beat up but still functioning 3ltr Hawkins

Once the potatoes are chopped, soak them in some water and
then pay some more attention to the roasting masala. Stir it if it looks like
it is sticking to the bottom of the pan and add a little bit of water if it
needs coaxing to separate from the bottom of the pan.

Let the spices roast in the masala for a few minutes before
adding the chopped potatoes. Add some salt to taste and 1/2 cup of water. Cover
and let the potatoes cook.

Meanwhile, check if the pressure cooker has cooled down.
Take the lid off carefully making sure your face is away from all the trapped
steam under that lid. Check if the garbanzos are tender and then carefully tip
them or use a ladle to add them to the simmering potato masala. Add some more
water and let the chole-aloo simmer till the potatoes are tender and the gravy
thickens.

I, of little patience, dumped the whole mix back into the
pressure cooker and cooked it under pressure for two whistles. In ten minutes I
had the softest garbanzo and the tenderest potatoes simmering in the delicious
gravy.

Feb 15, 2013

Yes, you read it right. This is what our week has been like
so far. On Tuesday, a prisoner transfer went horribly wrong when the convict escaped from the parking lot of a
Walmart about 30 miles from where we live. The police advised caution; the
husband advised locked car doors and my yoga studio started locking the lobby
door while we sweated in 105 degree heat and humidity inside. All the school
campuses in the surrounding areas, including my kid’s, went into lockdown mode.
Four days later the fugitive is still on the loose and the schools are still
in lockdown.

With a fugitive running around who knows where the last
thing I needed was a broken garage door but that is what happened the very next
day. As I slowly backed out of my garage I heard a loud banging/ grating noise,
a metal on metal crash of some kind. I had the presence of mind to brake and
pull forward. I stopped the car and got out to see that top of my van had
crashed into the bottom panel of the garage door which apparently had not
rolled all the way back up as it is supposed to.

Being the calm and collected person that I am, I checked the
rear of the car for damage. It seemed to be unharmed. Then I noticed that the
garage door was off one of its rollers and bent into a V from the middle. Yeah,
it was not good. At this point I called up a friend and asked her to pick me up
since I was due for a seminar at the kid’s school. Then it dawned on me that I
couldn’t leave the garage door open, all banged up and broken, especially with
a fugitive who may or may not be looking for just such an opportunity to break into a house for food and shelter. So I
told the friend to cancel the pick-up plan and instead ran over to my neighbor’s
and banged on her door. At this point, I was panicking slightly. She greeted me in her bathrobe and I told her to come
quick, I had an emergency.

The good neighbor that she is, she came, tightening her
blue bathrobe around her, took a look at the garage door, climbed a chair to
check for damage to my car roof (a couple of scratches) and declared I needed
to call a repair man to get the door fixed. Which I did (thanks to Angie’slist) and two hours later a very efficient repair man parked his van in front
of my house, assessed the situation and gave me a very reasonable estimate to
fix the door. I agreed on the spot and he proceeded to mend the garage door. An
hour later the door was fixed and I breathed easy.

In the entire garage hullabaloo (yeah, I am using that word
and sticking to it) I totally forgot to do my weekly blog post. Now that the drama around our house has cooled down, here I am
with my sixth blog post of the year (I am running one blog post behind) announcing a two week
extension of the “I cooked in my Indian pressure cooker and it didn’t blow up in my face”.

The reasons for the extension: One, I haven’t had a chance to write
another pressure cooker post. Two, a few friends requested an extension. Three,
I have received only a couple of entrees so far, mainly because I haven’t talked
about the event much or maybe because the PC is blowing people’s faces more than
I thought it did.So for now, the deadline has been extended to Feb 28. Send in
your entrees to jayawagle (at) gmail.com and don’t forget to end the post with “I
cooked (insert the name of the dish you cooked) in my Indian pressure cooker
and it didn’t blow up in my face!” Also, tell me what PC you use and why.
Meanwhile, check these heart warming posts by Anita and Soma. Fugitive Update: Four days ago, the escaped fugitive was found and killed in a confrontation. I can keep my garage door open now, not that I would ever do it on purpose.

Feb 5, 2013

Last week was one of the erratic weather weeks we Texans
have become used to. For those of us who grew up in a clearly demarcated
climate season, it can take some getting used to pleasant 70 degree weather followed
by a cold front and two days later foggy and humid weather. There is no rainy
season in Tx either. The rains grace us intermittently; soak the land for a few
hours or a few days and then vanish over the horizon to return at another time of its choosing.
Last week, the rains started just as I picked up the kid
from school and was heading back. The light drizzle quickly turned to a
torrential downpour by the time I parked the car into the garage. Five minutes later, the rain was falling in steady streaks.

I was about to close the door when the kid asked, “Mamma,
can I go play in the rain, pleeease?”

He was waiting patiently, beseeching me with his big, brown
eyes. “Ok,” I said, “but wear your raincoat and your rain boots.” I needed to unload some groceries anyways.

“Ok, ok, ok,” he yelled as he ran off to find his rain gear.
The raincoat is from last year and getting a bit small for him. His sweater sleeves poked out under
the yellow raincoat’s sleeves. He jammed his feet into the black rain boots and went
in search of his plastic boats.

I opened the garage door to let him splash and play on the
driveway while I watched over him from the dry safety of the garage. He found a
small puddle in the driveway and immediately jumped in it. “This is no fun,” he
said. The water wasn’t too deep and the splash barely made it to his ankles. So
off he went in search of deeper puddles. He found one in the neighbor’s yard.
Their driveway slopes steeper than ours and one corner forms a tiny pool, big
enough to make a splash up to his knees.

Not much of a puddle﻿

After testing the puddle for its staying power he brought in
his plastic boats and started floating them. “Can you bring my dump truck?” he
asked squatting at the shore of the puddle.

“Sure,” I said. I handed him the dump truck which he
immediately proceeded to fill with the water gushing down the drain. Then, he
dumped all the water over the boats.

“I am not bringing you a bucket and I want you to come in
now,” I said to him. I was cold and wet and ready to go in the warm house.

“Five more minutes, pleeeease,” he said as the fists started
to come together in the familiar, begging/ prayerful gesture.

Following the floating boat

I decided to let him play for a bit more. Watching him splash and play in the water, my thoughts
wandered to my own childhood. Memories of splashing and playing in the rain with
my sister and my cousins came flooding in. I don’t remember who first started
the boat competition but it became standard practice for us to make paper boats and
race them in the temporary gutter that formed at the side of the road every time
it rained.

His boat is ahead of mine

Suddenly, I had an idea. I grabbed some papers from the junk mail and started
tearing squares, folding them twice over and then folding them in triangles to
make some paper boats.

“Come on kid, let’s have a boat race,” I called out to him.

﻿

And the winner is... The red boat

He was skeptical at first but once the boats started
floating he was hooked. I watched my son watching
intently over his boat, coaxing it to float ahead of mine and sighed contently. We stayed out, racing our paper boats, till our boats were wet and limp and couldn’t float anymore.
It was a day well spent even if it was cold and wet and windy. What are your
memories of rainy season as a child?

Jan 25, 2013

In part 2 of Go Pumpkin Go Chatura had safely crossed the forest and her daughter was about to reveal to her the plan she had come up with while picking vegetables in the garden.

“Well, I saw this pumpkin growing in the corner of the yard
and I thought, what if we let it grow as big as it can get. We will have to
nourish it and take care of it for a few months. If we can let it grow big
enough to be able to hide you inside it…” Samajh quickly finished. She looked
at her husband and mother, expecting them to laugh at her idea.

To her surprise, her mother nodded her head and smiled at
Samajh. “I think it just might work. We will have to figure out the finer
details in the days ahead but I see no reason why we shouldn’t be able to pull
it off.”

As the days turned into weeks and weeks into months, Chatura
and Samajh planned and plotted of ways to get through the jungle safely. Meanwhile,
Chatura enthralled her grandkids with stories of her adventures, some true, some
embellished and some imaginary. The kids couldn’t get enough of their nanima.

The
mother daughter took care of the house and kept a watch over the pumpkin. They
tended to it every day, nourishing it with water and fertilizing it with
compost.In a few months, their hard
work harvested the biggest pumpkin the town had ever seen. It was almost three
feet tall and about two feet in diameter. Chatura was a small woman and it was
easy for her to fit inside the giant pumpkin. The problem was to transport the
pumpkin through the forest.

Since nobody in the town was foolish or brave enough to do
it Karma came up with a plan clever enough to match his wife’s. I should
mention that Karma was a carpenter by profession but in his spare time he liked
to invent little contraptions for the amusement of his children. The
neighborhood kids were always hanging around the workshop in the hopes of
catching him in his spare time. That was when he would whittle a piece of wood
in the shape of a monkey, add some springs and wheels to it and viola, the little
monkey would start cartwheeling on the ground.

A few days before the pumpkin was to be harvested, Karma set
on building a little round cart that would fit snuggly beneath the giant gourd.
He added four wheels underneath and added a few levers for Chatura to steer.
The next day, the neighbors helped Samajh and Chatura hollow out the pumpkin
and carve two eyes and a nose for the old woman to see and breathe. They cut a
hole at the bottom, big enough for Chatura to get in.

Chatura hugged her grandkids and her daughter, said farewell
to her son-in-law and sat down on the cart he had built for her. The neighbors
handed her all sorts of eatables for the journey ahead. Then they lowered the
pumpkin over her, taking care to align the slits over her eyes and nose. Samajh
arranged some leaves and pumpkin vines around the cart to camouflage it. Then
they all gently pushed the cart to the edge of the forest, whispered their
goodbyes, said a silent prayer and watched as Chatura bravely steered her
pumpkin cart on the rough forest path. Now it was up to Chatura to survive the
one and a half day journey.

Inside the stuffy pumpkin Chatura steered the cart all the
while keeping an eye out for Sher Khan. Around mid-day she thought she heard a
roar but it seemed to fade away in the distance. Around two in the afternoon
she decided to take a break and eat some lunch. Steering the cart was hard on
her old bones and she was hungry. She deftly steered the pumpkin behind some
bushes and started eating her lunch.

Suddenly, she heard rustling on the other side of the
bushes.She stopped eating and tried to
stay as calm as possible. The rustling stopped and Chatura heard voices talking
in earnest.

“We need to get rid of that lion,” said a raspy voice.

“But Sardar we have tried so many times. Sher Khan is
cunning. He stays away from our part of the jungle,” a squeaky voice said timidly.

“Well, we will have to do something. No one comes through
the jungle anymore for fear of him. We haven’t looted a single traveler in
months. The last one who came through was the old woman and she didn’t have a
dime on her,” Sardar said angrily.

Chatura could not believe her luck. These were the bandits
who had waylaid her a few months ago. They were a rag tag bunch of village
misfits and bullies who made their living robbing defenseless travelers. But
they could be useful to her in escaping the predator. She decided to get their
attention.